To all - Washington Post article about (heavy) wireless use in Finland.
Letter From Finland
A Cell Phone in Every Pocket
By T.R. Reid
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 26, 1999; Page C01
HELSINKI—At the sun-splashed outdoor cafe beside Hakaniemi harbor, I sat
down at a table and the smiling waitress came over. She had a small black pad
but no pen or pencil.
I placed a fairly complicated order: soup, entree, vegetable, salad, dressing and
a mug of Finland's famous beer, Lapin Kulta ("The Gold of Lapland"). But the
waitress didn't write anything down. Instead, she unfolded that black pad--it
turned out to be a cellular phone--and called the kitchen, perhaps 15 yards
away, to relay my order. Then she took her phone and her smile and moved on
to the next table.
Which is evidently a perfectly normal way for a waitress to operate here in the
world's most wireless nation, a country that seems to have developed a national
consensus that anything worth doing is worth doing by mobile phone.
Americans often think of themselves as the most technologically advanced
people on Earth. But when it comes to incorporating the latest
telecommunications technology into daily life, Finland is far ahead of us. The
country has 5 million people and 3 million cell phones--a penetration rate of 60
percent, more than twice the U.S. level.
Finland is the first country to have more mobile phones than traditional
fixed-line units. But it won't be the last. In telecom circles, it's accepted
wisdom that every advanced nation will fairly quickly reach Finnish levels of
cell phone saturation. Finland, then, gives us a chance to see our telephonic
future.
Virtually every man, woman and teenager here--from investment bankers in
downtown Helsinki to reindeer herders on the arctic tundra--carries a mobile
telephone. The most common Finnish word for "cellular phone" is kannykka.
That translates roughly to "little hand," so that linguistically, at least, such a
phone is now considered a part of the body.
Walk down the street in Helsinki and you'll see phone-carrying window
washers, bus drivers, trash collectors, bicyclists and in-line skaters chatting
away as they work or play. In a downtown park that curves along the
waterfront, a jogger I met was carrying on a running
conversation--literally--with a friend who was bobbing in a kayak about 60
yards out in the Gulf of Finland.
Mobile phone usage is universal in high school, students say, and some
unhappy principals are moving to install metal detectors. "It's not for guns, like
in your American schools," laughs Hanna Riihelainen, a senior at Helsinki's
Laajasalon High. "They're trying to keep us from using our phones in class. But
it doesn't work. We hold the phones in our laps and send text messages back
and forth."
At present, the standard age for receiving a phone of one's own here is about
14, says Olli Martikainen, a professor at Helsinki University of Technology.
"But my 7-year-old will start school in the fall," Martikainen continues, "and
he's already worried that he'll be the only kid in first grade without a phone. I
have a couple of old phones sitting around, so I'll probably give him one."
Like its Scandinavian neighbors, Finland is a fiercely egalitarian nation, and it is
important here that rich and poor alike have access to technological advances.
Mobile phone rates are low--generally between $10 and $40 per month. To
help parents in Martikainen's situation, Finnish telephone companies offer
family plans with lower rates for households with multiple phone numbers.
On the other hand, Finnish telephone companies are rapidly phasing out phone
booths, on the grounds that hardly anybody uses them anymore.
The telephone book, too, is going the way of the dinosaur. When people call
for directory information, the operator sends the number in the form of a text
message; a touch of a key on the cell phone will save it in memory. As a result,
each Finn can carry around a personal phone book inside his phone.
The dark side of telephony, sadly, has also gone mobile. Telemarketers now
routinely call cell phones, so that you can be walking down the street and
suddenly have a stranger ring up to offer a time share in Lapland. Even worse,
people are starting to get "junk text messages"--that is, unsolicited ads and
notices that show up on the display screen of the phone.
Perhaps the biggest difference in a wireless society, though, is that it becomes
hard for people to gain freedom from their phones. "Life is not so private
anymore," laments Timo Kopomaa, a Helsinki sociologist.
"Since everyone is expected to have a phone all the time, the boss can always
find you. You can shut it off, but then you have the nagging thought, 'I might
be missing something important.' "
Finns love "dumb blonde" jokes, and one of the hot ones these days concerns a
blonde who gets a call on her mobile phone while in the grocery store. She
answers and says, "How did you know I was here?"
"That's funny in Finland," says Kopomaa, "because she hasn't yet recognized
that telephones connect people now, not places. Everybody here has made that
mental leap. And it won't be long before the rest of the world does, too."
© Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company |
